Crystal
by Memphis Lupine
Summary: [Lyserg x Ryu; for Mandii.] "I remember winter and do not love it..." [COMPLETE]
1. Part One

Note:  This fic was requested by Mandii – much love! – back in late November, early December, and it is with her go-ahead that I'm posting it here.  *hugs*

Disclaimer:  All characters involved belong to Takei Hiroyuki and the massive propaganda machines (I kid, I kid) that publish his works globally.

Continuity:  Set several (hypothetical) years into the future of the Mankin world, and holds that Ryu and Lyserg are in fact a couple.  Minor spoilers for the rudimentary past of Lyserg and references to tankoubon twenty-one.

Feedback:  Certainly appreciated in any form.

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**Crystal****: Part One**

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I remember winter, every time it comes whispering in, ice and snow and sharp things to prick tender skin along the breeze, and Mum would weave her fingers into my hair as we watched the snow drifting ever-down. It was easy to fall into dreams, then, with her hand warm and soft against my head, and Father humming something quiet as he watched us, watching the snow coming down, down.

      Dreams were pleasant when I was young: simpler, innocent things, such that I didn't fear any shadows at all. I could close my eyes, and slowly drift, not caring in that tentative line between waking and slumbering that my throat was sore again with winter and ill-health; that I was still smaller and ever would be than the other boys. What could it matter, with the cocooning feel of my small family, with winter falling all around?

      And then there was fire, strong and hateful, and the dreams became nightmares, that innocence webbed over with cloying shadows, and outside I had no love for snow, or sunlight, or any of the quiet things given by nature. It was being swallowed by all my weaknesses and natural inferiorities: softer, rounder features and feminine hands; petite and slender where the other boys were thick and strong; quick to illness amidst the buoyant health of youth. I knew I was weaker and I despised it, and I hated _him_ most of all for taking what had kept me from living with the knowledge of what I had within me.

      I remember winter, and do not love it.

      He does, though, and makes it so I can bear the snow and the smiles; _I smile, if shy and almost always embarrassed, and he gives me that somehow, though I don't know how. He disarms me easily, all theatrics and noisy, affectionate violence when he shouts at his friends, and all blushing flattery and stark honesty when he talks to me. Ryu is a brutally honest person, and I do not think he is capable of true, successful deception unless it was to protect someone he cares for._

      Even then, when he has lied before, to me or his friends, I can see that strange honor in his eyes that makes him more hero than villain, though God knows he's no real, noble hero. He is real, and noble, and something of a hero, but mostly he's just Ryu who makes me feel strange inside, comforted and sheltered, as if those natural weaknesses that fill me with narrow coldness are nothing more than little pieces of crystal that are only part of me.

      I don't know how to speak to him. I'd like to make him feel comforted and sheltered as well, I want to give him what reserved smiles I can, and once, when the cold took him and Yoh stayed me from doing what I wanted to do (what I didn't know I could ever want to do, what filled me with hate and anger and a tired, sad knowing), I wanted to be the cold so I could keep him safe.

      He does these things to me and I stand in the snow, watching it falling down down like bits of the sky torn savagely apart (now dying, and tumbling sweetly, softly in ruin), wondering if he would watch the snow with me as I did, once, with my first family.

-end part one-


	2. Part Two

Disclaimer to be found in the first part, and, again, hugs to Mandii.  

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**Crystal****: Part Two**

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      I wait in the snow, in the cold, half near to dreaming and mostly caught in an unthinking quiet without need to fill any voids that may, or may not, be within. It is easy, now, with fading sunlight and the sharp, brittle crispness of winter all about, to fall into aged and wearying memories; now beneath the small copse of trees near the house, hair growing damp with the slick melting of the snowflakes whispering down, I can remember with sudden clarity the feel of Mum's hand resting briefly upon my head. 

      I had known then, as I still know, that she did so out of gentleness for my winter illness, gentle because I looked so small and fragile that even I was puzzled by the feminine cut of my face reflected in the window. Knowing not with any bitterness, but the aching love for what is gone, and it is a deep, sore cut inside, to know that she knew and protected me from those flaws buried deep inside me.

      "Eh, Lyserg, forgot your coat," he says, startling me as he grins, ever theatric and near-smirking, coming in a long gait from the house. The coat rests along the broad length of his forearm, and I nod, hesitantly, suddenly struck with the need to cross my arms over my turtleneck, the cold piercing where before it had been a distant numbness. 

      "Thank you," I say softly, carefully. "Ah - thank you." 

      "A kiss for my services?" he suggests with an obvious wink, a familiar (and somewhat mortifying) dreamy gleam to his eyes, and I gather my coat quickly from his arm. "Oh, my beautiful innocent," Ryu begins, more than prepared to launch into one of his bizarre, almost romantic speeches, and I let him.

      The familiar motions of pulling my coat on serves as a balance point, tucking arms into sleeves that will warm up soon enough and glancing down at my feet out of an old instinct, from before when I was too shy to look my tormentors in the eye, and too nervous to look upon my saviors. Now it is only a brief, momentary habit, and I straighten my neck quickly, pulling the folds of my coat tight around my thin chest.

      "I don't suppose you have dinner ready?" I suggest carefully, acutely aware of the cold and no longer satisfied with the coat I have only now put on.

      He grins, almost sardonically, the cigarette in his mouth bobbing once, and rests his large, warm hand on my head. "What do you think?" he laughs, and his broad shoulders quiver with the emotion. "Ha! You've never had as grand a dinner as you will tonight!"

      My cheeks color slightly, and I carefully lift his hand from my head, absently smoothing the pale green of my hair under the dampness of half-melted snow. "I hope so," I smile, and kiss him once on his cheek, forced to stand on the toes of my boots and praying I would not slip.

      He claps a hand to his cheek when I settled back upon the (safer and less inclined to overbalanced) heels of my boots, and grins so widely I'm nearly embarrassed. "Dessert'll never top that," he assures me, and turns, large hand now at my elbow, to lead me back to the house, with its warm kitchen and glinting windows.

      "Wait," I blurt, and catch his wrist, kneading my fingers into the cloth there. Ryu glances down, puzzled, and I cannot smile, know I cannot summon the strength or the heart to do so; I can only look seriously up at him, wind and snow and veins flushing my face. "Just - stay and watch the snow with me."

      He blinks in that unconsciously half-bemused, half-sardonic manner he has, and then grins, not knowing why I've asked but agreeing anyway.

      Has he ever seen the weakness inside me?

-end part two/crystal-


End file.
